Services: Peter Wright

Training

Peter has trained thousands of people in more than 20 countries. With a focus on practical planning and organizational excellence, we provide comprehensive training programs for organizations in all sectors. Through insight and real world relevant examples, Peter will inspire participants to apply new lessons to old problems. Participants will leave sessions armed with the process, tools, and a plan to apply the knowledge they have gained.

We will work closely with your organization to clearly understand your training objectives, and design and deliver a program for maximum impact and knowledge transfer. We provide industry specific training to trade and professional association members. All materials are made available on-line for immediate access by session participants.

E-mail us for additional information and next steps.

01

Strategy & Planning Boot Camp

The Business Planning Boot Camp is an intensive 1 day program conducted by Peter Wright, President of The Planning Group. This unique professional development session will be specially customized for your group and is a mix of business planning training and workshop discussions to assist participants in thinking about their own organization's situation.

All participants receive unlimited access to the online version of Peter Wright's Strategy and Planning Toolkit. After attending the Boot Camp, participants will be able to start applying what they have learned immediately to drive real planning results within their organization. Without dumbing it down, the Boot Camp boils down business planning to a series of systematic, understandable concepts. More importantly, the concepts are presented in a dovetailed fashion to align with the integration that must be present in a successful business planning process. The program will cover the following:

The integrated planning model

Your role in business planning

The practical vision

Strategic imperatives

The planning / execution gap

The 7 deadly mistakes of business planning

Dynamic business planning

Introduction to project and action planning

02

Re-Tool Your Website

Conducted in partnership with Association Hub Expert and Customer Attraction Principal Jim Beretta, this engaging session is conducted over two half days to actually help organizations build a new website or completely retool an existing one.

This unique program combines professional development and measurable business improvement where participants may attend alone, or bring along 1 or 2 colleagues from within their organization with responsibly for their firm's website.

Participants will submit their website in between sessions for review and analysis by The Planning Group. Participants without a website are also welcome, as this session is the ideal starting point to creating a new site from scratch. The session will provide fundamental education regarding search engine optimization with an overview of:

Paid search vs. Organic Search

On-page optimization

Off-page optimization

Writing copy for Google

Selecting and optimizing keywords

Most importantly, participants will be provided with instruction, templates and tools to create a website re-tooling plan during the session. This session does not provide instruction on website coding, and it is assumed participants will outsource the actual site development. This session is focused on driving new and relevant traffic to your site and more targeted visitors to your site.

03

Strategic Thinking for Senior Leaders

This special program is for senior leaders looking for the challenge of new approaches to strategic thinking in today's business environment. As leaders become more senior, there is a much greater emphasis placed on strategic skills, and a much greater expectation of results. To solve new and more complex problems, senior leaders require new and innovative ways of thinking and acting strategically.

This special year long program is centered on a full day session and includes a monthly webinar and community of practice. The focus is to provide participants with several new strategic thinking models and the tools, exercises and ongoing reinforcement for real growth and development in a challenging and collaborative environment. The full day session and each unique monthly workshop and community of practice discussion is conducted by Peter Wright.

E-mail us for additional information and next steps.

04

Internal Consulting Boot Camp

Whether it is for finance, process improvement, project management, planning or any other important function, organizations are increasingly seeing the benefit of internal consultants. Internal consultants provide a crucial service and help their organizations make dramatic improvements. Very often however internal consultants morph into the role with no formal training. Most internal consultants are a clear expert in their subject matter, but they rely on their content expertise with very little consideration given to what it takes to be a highly effective internal consultant.

In this full day professional development workshop, Peter provides the fundamental skills and behaviors to be a great internal consultant. Peter walks you through every important step to make each consulting engagement successful from day-one. In this interactive session, you will have an opportunity to apply each major concept to your own situation. With a practical approach, you will learn:

In addition, Peter will impart his consulting wisdom through his "12 Guiding Principles" and many serious and humorous examples to help you learn from his mistakes.

05

Introduction to Practical Project Management

In this full day interactive session, Peter provides a basic overview of project management process and brings all participants up to a general skill level, and speaking the same language around projects. Session focus is on the skills required for effective planning and execution of projects, and we put a strong emphasis on understanding project management roles and responsibilities. Session topics include:

Making a case for Project Management Discipline

Generic project management basics

Competing priorities of Time, Cost and Scope

Project Stakeholders and the Project Team

Initiating a project

Project Planning

Converting the Plan into action

The Work Breakdown Structure

Managing Scope, issues and conflict

Managing with Meetings

The fine art of killing a project

Judging results after completion

Formal project close and post implementation review

E-mail us for additional information and next steps.

The Planning Group helps businesses take a more practical approach to strategic and operational planning... and measure the results..."
Profit Magazine

Speaking

If you are looking for an engaging and energizing speaker for your next conference, Peter Wright is quickly becoming known as a leading speaker in all areas of business planning and operational excellence. In a large keynote setting or a smaller interactive workshop, Peter's no-nonsense and slightly irreverent approach is sure to get people laughing, talking, and thinking differently.

Although Peter pokes fun at conventional and corporate wisdom, he speaks about serious topics with a practical message designed to help anyone improve the condition of their private, public, or non-profit organization. In his work throughout North America, Europe, and Asia, Peter has demonstrated an uncanny ability to cut through the clutter and get to the heart of tough issues faced by associations, companies and their leaders.

These are not canned speeches. We take a bundled approach to deliver real value before, during and after your event to ensure maximum impact. Most speeches include a pre-conference webinar, article or survey ...and all speeches are preceded by pre-conference interviews with Board, delegates or industry leaders. All Peter's speeches are fully customized to your objectives and range from 30-75 minutes in length. Travel expenses are extra.

E-mail us for additional information and next steps.

01

Conference Networking Bundle

The Planning Group's proprietary "Conference Networking Bundle" is based on the belief that while all conferences offer a number of benefits, networking is the single item that will deliver the most value over the long term.

Coincidentally, networking is the only value driver at conferences that attendees control. Conference delegates might get marginally more value out of a seminar or workshop if they put more into it, but typically the value from conference offerings doesn't depend on anything attendees do.

Networking is different. If delegates don't put effort in, if they do not plan to network effectively, they have wasted an important and rare opportunity.

In this irreverent look at how we work, Peter makes the case that we are not actually scared of change, or adverse to risk and there is not a human condition that simply prevents us from doing things differently. In this humorous but thought-provoking talk, Peter explores whether our fear of change is essentially a fear of hard work. With the case made for change, Peter lays out a calculated approach to confront and overcome our indolence for extraordinary outcomes.

03

Creating a Culture of Innovation

Innovation has resurged as the latest flavor of the month initiative in organizations of all stripes. Books are being written, flowcharts are being drawn, stage gates are being reimagined and consultants are getting rich. But are we really making a difference? Are we really making the transformative changes to culture required to be truly innovative? In this engaging speech, Peter draws from client experiences to make the case for transforming culture as the real basis for making organizations innovative.

04

PLanning as a Powerful Tool for Change

Can simply writing something down make us likely to accomplish more and to find new and innovative ways to improve? Is strategic planning just a hollow exercise that we do once a year, or can planning actually help us move forward and propel us to bigger and better things? In this interactive session, Peter demonstrates how the act of planning must drive change, improve our outcomes and personal performance, and lead us to achieve remarkable results.

05

Brutal Prioritization

After all the strategizing and planning, no one really wants to stop doing anything. Too many priorities and too little focus is a menace for most organizations today. Yet, organizations with fewer priorities are much more effective and actually accomplish more. With hilarious anecdotes and tested and proven solutions, Peter makes the case for brutal prioritization and maps out the steps for real change, real courage and the liberation that comes from doing less.

Peter Wright captures an organization's key assets and channels them into operational opportunities to be further leveraged. As a result of Peter's practical approach and insight at the planning sessions, we our now in a better position to advance strategically... and with greater efficiency..."
Stephen Ashworth, Junior Achievement Canada, National Office

Research continues to prove that humans are incapable of doing two things at the same time ...so why do we delude ourselves that we are brilliant multi-taskers? In this humorous, but serious subject, Peter looks at how multi-tasking is endemic of much bigger problems in many organizations today and the courageous steps that are required to break the cycle.

07

The Abdication of Leadership

More and more, leaders are busy working instead of leading. With most leaders being promoted for their functional capabilities, we forget to teach them how to lead and they default to their operational comfort zone. The result is that entire organizations are micromanaging one level down and no one is leading change, strategy and real development for the future. In this sobering topic, Peter defines a 7 step strategy to reassert leadership in your organization.

08

The Human Side of Integrating your Acquisition

Why does the integration of most acquisitions fail? With so much experience of companies buying other companies, why do we rarely get the results we expect and the forecasted value for shareholders? Based on research and client experience, Peter looks at the criticality of the human side of integration projects to recommend a path that will provide better results.

09

What Ever Happened to Insight?

We certainly have more data than ever and we have better tools for manipulating vast amounts of the stuff, so where is all the real insight? Provoked by a client who presented print outs of Google searches as research, Peter digs into this phenomenon of data without understanding.

10

How Do We Make Our Meetings Suck Less?

The behavior in most meetings today crushes any veneer of common courtesy and respect. With more meetings than ever, why can't we ever seem to accomplish anything? With meetings as the principal backdrop for how we work and work together, Peter uses a career of running meetings to explore how we can make our meetings more effective, more productive and hopefully, just a little bit shorter.

Webinars

Members look to you for knowledge. Not just technical and industry specific knowledge, but knowledge they can use every day to improve their performance, and make their job more rewarding. A crucial part of your mandate is to provide continuing professional education, training and mentorship opportunities in numerous forums and methods that are suitable to the needs of members at all levels. Increasingly, members are demanding education to be more relevant, more frequent and timelier.

At the same time, you are constantly looking for new ways to provide service and communication to members and to continually remind them of the value of membership between major events and conferences. Webinars are an effective way to provide crucial professional development to members, right in their office ...and often on their lunch break.

E-mail us for additional information and next steps.

Webinars are a Great Revenue Opportunity for Associations

Peter offers a full range of turnkey webinars completely customized to serve your industry and the needs of your members. All webinars are one hour in length.

We will provide advice on selecting, pricing and marketing your webinar program to members. You set the schedule, sign up your members, collect their fees, and we do the rest:

Provide content customized to your sector and industry

Provide an expert webinar presenter

Send appropriate pre-read materials and templates to participants

Take care of all the technology

Follow up with session assessments

E-mail us for additional information and next steps.

Choose From a Range of Available Topics

Including business planning, project management and leadership development: